1. Informal or consulting services such as consultation on data management plans or providing
reference support for finding and citing data and datasets.

2. Technical or hands-on services such as providing technical support for a data
repository or directly participating with researchers on a project (as a team
member).

The article fleshes out
the categorisation with additional examples and the authors found that the
first type is more commonly offered than the second, but not by much.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, the authors’ reveal that "The most commonly offered or
planned informational RDS, findingand citing datasets, is a service that simply
extends a familiarlibrary reference service into the realm of data".

Research Data Services in Australia

Thinking about this in the
Australian context, I don’t think we could draw the same distinctions. Our
library research data services – which are still few and far between - seem far
more blended and I’ve not yet heard of Australian RDS that offer reference
support for finding datasets. In fact, I think our RDS are probably more
weighted toward the second (technical) category, but only just. This is probably
because our RDS came into being sometime after significant funding was provided
to institutions by ANDS to develop
infrastructure and grow the research data commons. The focus was on technical
infrastructure and services, not consultancy services, which were developed
somewhat later (if at all).

Looking back at the presentations on ‘Developing library research data services’
at an ANDS webinar in September last year, we learned that:

All three services were still
developing and staff were on a steep learning curve. Amanda Nixon from Flinders
called RDS “giving people what they didn’t know they wanted”. She highlighted
the role of the library in offering RDS leveraging a natural link with
researchers and their research outputs.

It’s interesting that in
Australia, our libraries collaborate more widely than our North American
counterparts with respect to Research Data Services (judging by the
aforementioned article). All of the three Australian RDS examples above
mentioned collaborations with a range of internal partners (e.g. IT services,
ethics, research office) and external partners (e.g. statewide eResearch providers, national
infrastructure providers such as RDSI).

Training opportunities

The article by Tenopir and
colleagues also notes that, "There appears to be somewhat of a mismatch
between what academic research library directors believe they offer to their
librarians and what the librarians themselves perceive to be available to them
in the way of RDS training opportunities. Nonetheless, these results portend well for the future of RDS, as there
are clearly some opportunities for training of librarians in RDS skills."

I wonder whether the same mismatch
occurs in Australia. I had the pleasure of facilitating an ANDS-CAUL workshop
on research data in Auckland last year specifically for the heads of university
libraries. The workshop reflected a real concern between UL’s about how to
provide their librarians with training in managing research data. Our North
American colleagues said that attending conferences was the preferred method of
training, followed by courses and in-house training. In Australia, our
conference opportunities are more infrequent. ANDS has been providing workshops
for librarians, research managers etc that can help fill some of the gaps,
however serious attention needs to be paid to this area. It will be interesting
to see this develop over the next few years as libraries continue to grow their
offerings of research data services and develop the skills of their librarians
in this key area.

Being prepared to engage with content creators,
being skilled at interviewing to get or manage content

Being flexible and adaptive

Being outspoken and proactive – about your
skills, about what librarians can do

Data librarianship is a new and emerging profession which is
ill-defined in terms of roles and responsibilities and is equally ill-defined
in job titles. The speakers advised those wanting to move into the field to:

Look beyond job titles – jobs may not be called
‘Data Librarian’ but may actually be data librarian roles

In response to a question about how those in traditional
library jobs could move into non-traditional roles like data librarian, Siobhann
made an interesting comment that employers are
looking for something different because they don’t really know what librarians
can do. She – and the other panellists – advised being proactive and vocal
about what librarians (and libraries) can offer in the way of research data management.

The recording will be posted on the ANDS YouTube channel soon and appear under the 'Data Librarians' playlist.

About Me

Natasha Simons is a Research Data Management Specialist with the Australian National Data Service, an organisation set up by the Australian Government to enhance the value of data for researchers, research institutions, and the nation. Located at Griffith University in Brisbane, Natasha serves on the Council of Australian University Librarians Research Advisory Committee and is an ORCID Ambassador. She is an author and reviewer of papers related to library and information management and co-authored a 2013 book on digital repositories. Natasha was the Senior Project Manager for the Griffith Research Hub, which won awards from Stanford University and VALA. She is an advocate for open data and open repositories. Natasha is @n_simons on Twitter.